About me

This blogname was derived from the novel The Secret Life Of Saeed The Pessoptimist by the Palestinian Israeli Emile Habiby: absurdism as weapon against the (ir)realities of daily life in Palestine/Israel. (The subtitle is from a book by Dutch author Renate Rubinstein. It could as well be my motto).
My real name is Martin (Maarten Jan) Hijmans. I've been covering the ME since 1977 and have been a correspondent in Cairo. I started my 'Abu Pessoptimist' blog in January 2009 out of anger during the onslaught in Gaza. The other one, The Pessoptmist, is meant to be a sister version in English. (En voor de Nederlandstaligen: ik wilde in november 2009 een tweede blog in het Engels beginnen en ontdekte te laat dat als je één account hebt, een profiel dan meteen ook voor allebei de blogs geldt. Vandaar dat het nu ineens in het Engels is... So sorry.)

Sunday, July 15, 2012

Still no clear picture of what happened in Treimsa

UN personnel inspects a damaged school in Treimsa. (AFP)

Still we don't know what happened in Treimsa. Will we ever? AFP reported that Syria
denied that its armed forces carried out a massacre in the small Sunni village, which is surrounded by Alawite villages and which seemed to have been a rebel stronghold. UN
investigators meanwhile returned to the village on Sunday in order to carry on with their investigation. .

According to AFP foreign ministry spokesman Jihad Makdissi said at a news conference in Damascus that 37
gunmen and two civilians were killed in clashes there with rebels. He denied categorically helicopters and tanks had been used in Thursday's assault on Treimsa. "This is absolutely not true.
Only troop carriers and lights weapons were used, the most powerful of
weapons being RPGs (rocket-propelled grenades)," he said."What happened was not an attack by the army on innocent civilians.The aim of this news conference
is to tell people that what happened was not a massacre... It was a
clash between regular forces and armed groups who do not believe in a
peaceful solution."

The UN observers, who returned on Sunday, said after their visit on Saturday that they saw blood and evidence of the
use of heavy weapons as well as burned out homes. They did not give a casualty toll. "On the basis of this preliminary
mission, UNSMIS can confirm that an attack, using a variety of weapons,
took place in Treimsa on July 12," said Sausan Ghosheh, spokeswoman for
the UN Supervision Mission in Syria. "The attack on Treimsa appeared
targeted at specific groups and houses, mainly of army defectors and
activists. There were pools of blood and blood spatters in rooms of
several homes together with bullet cases," she said. "The UN team also observed a
burned school and damaged houses with signs of internal burning in five
of them," Ghosheh said, adding that a "wide range of weapons were used,
including artillery, mortars and small arms."

Makdissi said "only five buildings where there were very sophisticated weapons were targeted."

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights had said more than 150 people were killed in the assault which it alleged
was a massacre carried out by the army backed by pro-regime shabiha
militiamen. "It might be the biggest massacre
committed in Syria since the start of the revolution," in March 2011,
Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP.

Meanwhile violence killed at least 55 people on Sunday, the Observatory said. The town of Rastan, a rebel stronghold in the central province of Homs, was shelled as well as the Damascus neighbourhoods of Tadamon Kfar Sousa, Nahr Aisha and Sidi Qadad. According to the Observatory it was the heaviest fighting in Damascus since the beginning of the uprising.

On Saturday at least 118 people got killed, 32 opposition warriors, 37 soldiers of the Syrian army and 49 civilians, according to the Observatory,.